SPIDRON
Opening:
2017 Aug 31, 19:00
On view:
2017 Sep 01 2017 Sep 03
Program:
weekdays between 11 a.m. – 10 p.m.

SPIDRON STEREO 3D OBJECT MAPPING INSTALLATION

3d animation: László Zsolt Bordos
Spidron System: Dániel Erdély
Sound: Darko Kolar aka DEKODE

SPIDRON images and formulas

A lecture by Dániel Erdély


SPIDRON MAPPING is an art installation which uses a complex geometric shape, stereoscopic 3d animation, sound and video projection mapping to create an audio-visual experience.

SPIDRON SYSTEM: SPIDRON is a mathematical formula invented by the Hungarian designer Dániel Erdély: http://spidron.hu/main.html

The construction of triangles – whose basic component is the “S” shaped Spidron – can be deformed and moved continuously in space. It is composed by two types of triangles alternating in a spiral fashion. The Spidron was initially produced as a piece of homework for a theory of forms class taught by Ernő Rubik. 15 years ago, the Spidron Team – an international research team led by Dániel Erdély -, began work on the variations of the astonishing wealth of the Spidron family of forms has been featured on the front page of the October 2006 edition of Science News, published in several million copies, while the magazine Pour La Science published an article of
several pages about it in May 2014.


SPIDRON MAPPING:
The installation of László Zsolt Bordos uses the Spidron shape for inspiration. He explores the visual possibilities of the geometric formation using the object mapping technique. 3D animation as a tool used by artists and the appearance of high-brightness video projectors has facilitated object projection using video images, 3d animation. Today, it is possible to set up complex projections that make it difficult for viewers to perceive the boundary between real and virtual phenomena. Projections always have a tangible, physical component (object or building), onto which the virtual content carried by light is projected. During the creative process, the artist builds an exact virtual replica of physical world and uses it to produce the creative layer of the work. Finally, that creative content is projected back onto the real, spatial form (object, building, etc.). The re-projection of virtual 3D animation onto the real 3D scene, and the interplay that results from the combination of the two components, results in novel, often striking and perplexing visual experiences for the viewer. In order to enhance that experience further, Bordos also uses anaglyph stereoscopy. Anaglyph stereoscopy is a way of achieving a stereoscopic effect in a single image. If two images taken from slightly different angles are presented to the two eyes, a virtual sense of depth is created. The spatial effect is the result of our brains processing and integrating the two slightly displaced images perceived by the two eyes.

“Viewers are unable to interpret their visual impressions using their accustomed methods; they are abandoned by their senses (because the projected image modifies the surface it is projected onto). The projection derails the viewers customary schemes of perception and observation and urges them to create a new process of interpretation.”

László Zsolt Bordos
3D mapping artist


SPIDRON in Sfântu Gheorghe

The Spidron has arrived home. My paternal grandfather was born in the region, in Târgu Mureş, the town of Farkas and János Bolyai. Before I come to Sfântu Gheorghe, I will visit his old hometown which greatly influenced his art and thinking. He was born István Spitzer, he Hungarianized it to “Erdély”. This naming was not at all arbitrary, just like the name of the “Spidron”. It is not hard to guess that the first part of the word refers to this stem, this root, while also to the form indicated by it, the spiral and the spiderweb. It may also be sensed that the name inherited the “-on” ending from the end of the Greek “polygon” („γωνία” /gonia/ = angle, πολύγωνος, πολυγώνιος /polygonos, polygonios/ = having many angles*). The latter also means “giving birth a lot”; it also means knee, the other side of which is the popliteus.
This is about naming. In 1979 or 1980 I made the first moving Spidron relief for Ernő Rubik’s form analysis class from a simple sheet of paper made in the Diósgyőr Paper Factory. Before that, as an apprentice, I created similar drawings in plane. If I hadn’t started with the one with 9 angles, I would have come up with the movable version earlier. So I lost 4-5 years, but I think Rubik gave the decisive impetus by being amazed and saying “I have never seen something like this!”. Years passed after that until a Romanian crystal physicist, Cristiana Grigorescu, saw it when she accidentally came to Budapest, because on her way back from Austria, at the border, she realized that she had one more day in her passport to stay abroad. She was not allowed to go back, so she got on a bus carrying Hungarian artists which brought her to Budapest. A family friend of ours, the excellent textile designer, Klára Preiser, also travelled on that bus. I visited her on that day – I think, in her studio in Mester street – when Cristiana also spent her extra day there. She saw my moving geometric structure and she hasn’t stopped sending me letters and postcards ever since. She insisted that I should present the design to scientists, crystal physicists at the 12th Crystal Growth World Conference, which would begin in Jerusalem four years later. I cannot sum up now how my definite protest turned into my being there in front of 80 scientists and presenting my invention in English for years later, but this is what happened.
The events have since accelerated. I am still in a compulsive interaction with my creation, which is not just a form game, an end in itself, but it seems that it has multitudinous consequences in geometry and physics. The Spidron structure and its elongation-free deformation gathering “material” from all directions of the plane at the same time provides the possibility for many applications.

I hope that in my lecture to be held on 31 August 2017 we will manage together to have a taste of this apparently simple geometrical adventure, but with highly special properties.

With thanks,
Dániel Erdély 

* I also thank hereby István Perczel’s linguistic assistance!


The events are part of pulzArt5 contemporary arts festival.

WARNING! Due to excessive light and sound effects during the exhibition, it is not recommended for children under 6, for pregnant women, for people with epileptic syndrome or for people with pacemakers!